"Realism is a worthless standard to apply to any work of art, and what we call realism is as often as not a cheap parlor trick, a mediocre writer's attempt to distract us from his lack of poetic range by flaunting an overdeveloped talent for mimicry or an unrestrained appetite for inventories of inconsequential detail."
– David Bentley Hart, "Tolstoy and Dostoevsky (and Christ)."
I always get excited when Hart, who usually writes about religion and philosophy, strays into the realm of literary criticism. This is one of my favorite essays of his (along with a more recent piece he wrote on Nabokov), and I think he nails literary realism on the head here. Not too long ago I was arguing with someone about Zadie Smith (whose fiction I find remarkably overrated) and Hart's quote came to mind as apt criticism of White Teeth.
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